


Wait for You

by llamaspice



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, M/M, ghost!liam, mentions of Zayn Malik/Harry Styles, mentions of Zayn Malik/Louis Tomlinson, pining!Liam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-03
Updated: 2013-08-03
Packaged: 2017-12-22 06:59:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/910287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/llamaspice/pseuds/llamaspice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liam has spent so much time alone, but then Zayn walks into his life and changes it all. He only wishes that Zayn could see him, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wait for You

**Author's Note:**

> Yay, first fic on this site. I apologize for any mistakes ahead of time!
> 
> Also, the major character death thing only kind of applies? Idk how to explain it. You'll see.
> 
> Anyway, enjoy!

When Liam wakes up, the house is empty. Bare.

He is alone. He stays that way for God knows how long, and the whole time the only thing he does is sit because honestly, what else can he do?

He’s waiting for something, but he doesn’t know what. A great, big, blinding white light to come and take him away? An angel? Some kind of swirling portal to another world? Whatever it is, he’s scared. This world fits him like a glove, and he does not want to leave it. So he sits (he imagines that if he were alive, his bum would be hurting something awful by now).

He can see the light of the sun fading and then slipping through the shutters each day. He can hear the rain tap against the glass, _won’t you come outside?_ He can hear things changing, but he stays the same.

He closes his eyes. He doesn’t know how long that lasts, either. But then he hears the lock downstairs turning, slowly, and he opens them. It’s been so long since he heard anything human that it makes his heart - or whatever semblance of it that he still has - jump at the noise.

There’s a woman downstairs. Two, he thinks. He can hear their voices, and it makes him smile.

"This house hasn’t been used in years." Says one, who has a high, soft-pitched voice. “But it’s still in good condition."

"It’s beautiful." The other woman says. Her voice is warm, and it reminds Liam of soft wool blankets and marshmallows in his cocoa. It’s the first time he remembers anything of his life, and it scares him a bit. He wants to remember.

"Yes." The first woman responds. “Absolutely stunning architecture, if you ask me."

He hears a sigh, but he’s not sure who it came from.

"It’s a shame what happened here."

Liam stands up for the first time. What happened? Are they talking about him? He feels something in his stomach, something tugging him forward.

Without giving any second thought to it, he walks through the door. He only realizes what he’s done when he’s on the other side. It’s an odd, tingling sort of sensation - but he figures that he’ll get used to it. He can see the two women standing by the front door - one is rather short and plump, and she has rosy red cheeks. The other is taller and has long, dark hair.

He waves, stupidly. They don’t see him.

But they both look so _alive_ , and Liam wants so badly to make some sort of contact.

The shorter woman speaks; she’s the one with the soft voice. “Of course. It brings the property value down a bit, but-"

"Oh, it’s fine. I want to see it first before we talk cost."

Together they tour the house, accompanied by an unknown guest. Liam enjoys it. Though they can’t see him, he likes the feeling of being close. Likes how they smile and talk. But there’s a seed of envy in the pit of his stomach - he wishes he could live, too.

At the end of it, the tall woman grins, pushing her eyes into small crescents. “I’ll take it."

—-

Liam has not been so happy in, well, his entire life. Or death, actually. But he tries not to think about that.

There’s a large truck outside, and all day people have been in and out, carrying large furniture in and cleaning out the house. Liam is content with watching them from the window of his room (was it even his room? he doesn’t know for sure).

He’s so caught up in the activity outside that he doesn’t notice the door opening, or the boy who comes in. He turns around when he hears the floorboards creak.

The other boy is thin, with big, big eyes. He resembles the woman with the comforting voice. And he’s looking right at Liam.

Liam stands there, frozen. “Hello." He says, and it feels so strange to speak after such a long silence.

The boy doesn’t say anything, and Liam finally realizes - _oh,_ he’s looking out the window. The disappointment pools in his chest.

The other boy is actually, well, kind of beautiful. He’s all sharp lines and warmth and of course, he’s got those big, golden eyes. He's wearing a leather jacket and he's got a tiny bit of stubble, but his eyes betray that he is more naive that he seems. Liam can’t help but step forward, place his hand on his upper arm. But it slips right through him, his flesh and bone, and Liam feels his heart drop when the boy pulls his coat tighter around him.

"Mum." The boy calls, turning to the door. “Why’s it so bloody cold in here?"

Steps echo in the hall outside. “I’ll turn the heat up later." She pauses, steps into the room too. “You like this room, Zayn?"

Zayn. That’s his name - Liam repeats it in his head, over and over. Zayn, zayn. Zayn. He says it out loud, his voice just above a whisper. “ _Zayn_."

The boy looks toward Liam again, tilts his head slightly. Liam’s eyes grow wide - did Zayn hear him?

The woman knits her eyebrows together. “Is there something wrong, sweetie?"

"No…no, I just thought I heard…nevermind." He shakes his head. “Yeah, I like this room. It’s got a nice view."

The woman smiles. “I’ll take the one across the hall, then."

As the day goes by and the sun dips even further behind the trees, the room is slowly filled with Zayn’s things. Liam is fascinated by it all - the posters on the wall, his sketchpads, his bed.

He wonders if he should leave the room, give Zayn his privacy - it’s a bit creepy to just stay there, isn’t it?

But then again, he is a ghost. What’s creepier than that?

—-

Over the next few days, Liam watches him. He watches as he draws, his hands move over the paper, fingers becoming blanked with charcoal and lead. He watches Zayn with his headphones in, eyes closed tight and head bobbing back and forth as though there’s nothing else in the world.

He doesn’t watch, though, when Zayn is asleep.

He hates it when Zayn is asleep.

He’s so still, so quiet. Liam worries every night until he’s sure he can see the soft rise and fall of his chest. Then he is calm. Zayn is alright.

—-

Liam knows that he will never have a substantial presence in Zayn’s life - and he’s okay with that (or, that’s what he tells himself every day).

But that doesn’t stop him from trying. Whenever Zayn loses something, something small - a notebook, his keys - Liam, who has found that he can move small objects, places them in places he knows Zayn will be able to find them.

When Zayn throws himself into his bed, despairing at the state of his art, Liam knocks his sketchbook off a shelf, making sure that it lands open on a particularly beautiful piece.

Zayn doesn’t question the small fortune that has stumbled into his life, and Liam’s fine with that. At least he’s not freaked out by his stuff moving around so much.

When Zayn is sick, body sweating no matter how low his mother sets the thermostat, no matter how many blankets he throws off in the middle of the night - Liam curls up beside him, and he sleeps peacefully.

Months pass like this, Liam lingering on the margins of Zayn’s existence, just barely out of touch with him. But it’s enough, Liam thinks.

It’s enough.

—-

There’s a week when Zayn’s mother is away for a conference or something, Liam’s not sure. Zayn, of course, takes the opportunity to throw the loudest, largest party that Liam has ever seen (though, he thinks, that doesn’t really mean much).

There’s people filling the halls and spilling out into the yard and the closets and the bedrooms. The music is so loud the ground outside shakes, and Liam can’t go anywhere without walking through someone or something.

He looks for Zayn everywhere, because he likes all the people, really, but Zayn is his favorite, a comfort. He walks by a blonde-ish boy of about Zayn’s age. He’s loud and all smiles and laughs and Liam thinks that if he was still alive, they could have been friends.

"Zayn’s probably, you know, _busy._ " He says to a girl, who looks wounded at his words. “But I’m absolutely free tonight!"

The boy gets a drink thrown at him. Liam laughs and walks, or floats, rather, back up to Zayn’s room.

When he moves through the door, he expects Zayn to be on the bed, drawing. Like he usually is.

What he gets is Zayn, shirtless, sweating, pressed up against the wall by some smaller boy with a coy smirk and feathery brown hair. At first Liam is furious - how dare this stranger do this to his Zayn?

But then he sees that Zayn is smiling, pressing back, kissing the boy’s chin and neck and bare chest (and he kind of wants to die again, and again and again and again).

He leaves the room, escapes to the sanctuary of the attic, and though the music is pounding he can still hear the moans in his head.

—-

The next morning, the boy is still there. Louis, his name is. He’s curled up with Zayn in the bed, bright blue eyes opening just before Zayn’s.

Liam tries not to hate him, but it’s hard.

Zayn looks up at Louis when he awakens, and Liam wishes so much that it was him there, waking up with tangled limbs and messy hair and a tired smile. With Zayn.

And he decides that he can’t hate Louis, because Louis makes Zayn smile.

—-

He doesn’t see Louis again after that night, and Liam is a bit happy for that. Instead, the blonde boy, Niall, returns again and again. Every time he shows up, he makes Zayn light up. He is the most alive person Liam has seen.

Together, Niall and Zayn are sitting in the living room, playing video games while Liam sits between them.

"Fucking cold in here!" Niall exclaims as he gets up to inspect the thermostat.

"You get used to it."

Liam smiles at that.

Niall sits back down, beers in hand. “You know what they say about this place, right?"

Zayn takes one of the beers, sets his controller down. “What, that it’s old?"

"Nah man," Niall replies. “They say it’s _haunted_." He draws out the last word, lowering his voice to almost a whisper, like it’s some kind of strange taboo. Liam finds it amusing.

Zayn just laughs, takes a sip. “That’s bullshit."

"I’m serious! I used to ride by this place on my bike, and I swear I saw something - someone sitting up where your room is now."

"You’re so full of shit, Niall."

"I heard that the family used to live here, the son, he - oh, hold on."

Niall’s phone has rung, and he moves to the kitchen to answer it. Liam frowns, clenches his fists, because there’s still a part of him that wants to know what happened. So he gets up and follows Niall, hoping that maybe he’ll say something, anything.

"Babe." He says, leaning against the counter. “If you wanna talk to my uncle, you have to reconsider my offer. The one about the date."

Liam sighs because that’s not what he wanted to hear. He sits back down next to Zayn, watching how the light from the television reflects on his sharp features. He reaches out, touches Zayn’s cheek, and watches as he shivers. Liam pulls his hand back into his lap, frown etching lines into his face.

Niall comes back and plops onto the couch. “Who was that?" Zayn asks him, though he’s really only paying attention to the game.

"Girl I met at the party last night." He grins with pride. “She wants to talk to my uncle cause she heard he works admissions for this big art school."

"Oh." Is all Zayn says, and Liam can see it, see the want in Zayn’s eyes and how he gulps. He knows that Zayn has never showed anyone his art, not even his mother. In Zayn’s art he can see the depth and the pain and the joy and he can see that he deserves to take it beyond torn up sketchbooks and paintings shoved away behind shelves and under beds.

So when Niall walks past the bookshelf, where he knows Zayn has hidden away a sketchpad, he knocks it off so that it lands right before his feet.

Zayn’s eyes go wide. “Shit, no, don’t-"

But Niall picks it up, flips through its pages. He grins. “You, my friend, are fucking amazing."

Liam warms up at the way Zayn smiles.

—-

A tall, floppy haired boy with a dopey grin starts showing up at the house. Liam doesn’t know how to feel about him. He stands too close to Zayn, holds onto him too tightly with his big hands. He leans into Zayn, whispers softly into his ear, lips barely brushing his skin.

Liam grits his teeth whenever he’s around.

Though he knows that it’s coming, it still hurts when he hears the moaning from Zayn’s room.

He stays in the attic for a week.

—-

When Liam emerges, the boy is gone, and Zayn seems a bit torn up about it.

He stays on the couch, and his mother hovers about worriedly, wanting to coddle him but also wanting him to have his space.

While she’s at work, Zayn cracks open a case of beers and a pack of cigarettes.

Liam wants to hold him, but he knows that that wouldn’t help anything. He settles for watching him dejectedly from the other side of the room. Zayn downs drink after drink, lights a cigarette. Liam watches the smoke curl from his lips, slowly. It spreads out and fills the room.

Zayn lies down, tired. He’s still blowing smoke, so much so that Liam thinks his eyes would’ve watered at the smell. As he reaches for another drink, he drops his cigarette, and Liam tries to pick it up because he knows that it would be idiotic to leave it there - but his hand passes through it and the carpet slowly starts to glow with fiery embers.

He starts to panic, and Zayn’s asleep on the couch, and there’s not much he can do. Liam looks at Zayn, thinks that he cannot go now - Zayn has so much more ahead of him, he has a life that he still needs to live. So he musters up as much strength as he can gather and knocks over a nearby vase of flowers - it’s a long shot, it is, because it’s practically across the room. But it works, The water splashes out and smothers the embers.

Liam sighs in relief.

But then Zayn starts coughing, because there’s so much smoke already and he’s still asleep and god, Liam wants him to wake up and get out but he knows that Zayn will sleep through anything. He keeps coughing and coughing and Liam slowly feels his world slipping away, and then he sees what is happening.

Death has come to take Zayn. But Liam, no, Liam won’t have that.

Liam takes the hand of Death, and it’s so, so cold. He’s scared. Death is leading him away, and he does not know where he will go.

But then he looks back at Zayn, sees the soft rise and fall of his chest.

And he is calm. Zayn is alright.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Feedback is greatly appreciated, yo.


End file.
